The explosive growth of telecommunications has been accompanied by the deployment of communications systems in accordance with different technologies. This fact is exemplified by wireless communications. There are numerous cellular radio standards, including advanced mobile phone service (AMPS), which is a North American standard utilizing analog technology, total access communications system (TACS), which is an analog standard used in the United Kingdom, global system for mobile communications (GSM), which is a time division multiple technology used in many parts of the world, and code division multiple access (CDMA), which is a spread spectrum technology. There are additional standards for the upcoming third generation (3G) generation of cellular radio, including cdma2000, which is an evolution of CDMA and universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS). In the future, new generations of cellular radio services will occur, and thus the variety of technologies will increase. Moreover, wireless communications also incorporates non-cellular radio communications including land mobile radio service (LMRS) and satellite services. One can quickly conclude that the number of different wireless technologies is numerous and is getting larger with the passage of time.
A user, nevertheless, expects to communicate with another user regardless of the technology that is serving the user. Substantial capital has been invested in existing communications systems, and consequently the usage of these systems will continue even though communications systems with new technologies are being introduced. With wireless technologies, a converter is typically deployed with a base station radio in order to reconcile technology differences between the base station radio and the user's wireless terminal. With LMRS operation, for example, dedicated cabling between radios or radio control consoles are typically required. Furthermore, the user expects connectivity between wireless communications systems and wireline communications systems such as the Internet and the public switched telephone network (PSTN). There is certainly a need to facilitate the interconnection of disparate communications systems regardless of the underlying technology that is serving the user.